Predictors of Successful Reading Comprehension in Bilingual Adults: The Role of Reading Strategies and Language Proficiency

Deanna C Friesen,Bailey Frid

doi:10.3390/languages6010018

Abstract

The current study investigated the type of strategies that English–French bilingual adults utilize when reading in their dominant and non-dominant languages and which of these strategies are associated with reading comprehension success. Thirty-nine participants read short texts while reporting aloud what they were thinking as they read. Following each passage, readers answered three comprehension questions. Questions either required information found directly in the text (literal question) or required a necessary inference or an elaborative inference. Readers reported more necessary and elaborative inferences and referred to more background knowledge in their dominant language than in their non-dominant language. Engaging in both text analysis strategies and meaning extraction strategies predicted reading comprehension success in both languages, with differences observed depending on the type of question posed. Results are discussed with respect to how strategy use supports the development of text representations.

Highlights

There can be little doubt that, at its core, the goal of reading is comprehension
Research has primarily focused on language-based skills that predict comprehension success (e.g., August and Shanahan 2006; Erdos et al 2014), and recommendations are often based on improving language proficiency
We further investigated whether these strategies predict reading comprehension performance on different types of questions beyond what is accounted for by language proficiency

Summary

Introduction

Skilled reading comprehension (RC) ability allows individuals to access a wealth of information (e.g., vocabulary and content knowledge) and supports both school and career achievement (August and Shanahan 2006). For numerous bilinguals around the world, reading comprehension often occurs in a second language (L2) context (Grosjean 2001). For these L2 users, less experience in that language can lead to poorer reading comprehension relative to their monolingual peers (Aarts and Verhoeven 1999; Geva and Farnia 2012). Scores on the French receptive vocabulary measure were entered in the first step followed by all three of the strategy factors using the stepwise method.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion